Verizon appears to lead pack of Yahoo bidders

DouglasMacMillan

RyanKnutson

Verizon Communications Inc.’s pursuit of Yahoo Inc. received a boost as several prominent suitors opted not to make offers for the beleaguered Internet company.

Ahead of a Monday deadline for preliminary bids, the telecom giant was among a handful of firms moving ahead with offers to buy Yahoo
YHOO, +0.85%
or parts of it, compared with the roughly 40 firms that had initially expressed interest, people familiar with the process said.

One interested suitor that won’t be participating is Time Inc.
TIME, +0.28%
, which concluded the degree of difficulty in righting Yahoo’s fortunes is too great, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Verizon
VZ, +0.70%
, with a market cap of roughly $210 billion and about $4.5 billion in cash on its balance sheet, has the means to purchase Yahoo’s declining Web assets and a logical blueprint for folding them into its fledgling digital media business, which includes the AOL properties it acquired last year for $4.4 billion.

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